Men’s health centre

Does snoring keep you up all night?

Every night the same ritual plays out in Nancy Rothstein’s bedroom. She goes to sleep before her husband does, and then, a few hours later, she’s awakened by the grating sound of his snoring. “I usually lie there for a while and try to decide whether I have the energy to move to another room,” she says. “I’ve tried earplugs, which are uncomfortable, so most nights I end up playing musical beds. Some nights it’s just simpler to start out in a different room, so I can get a good night’s sleep.”

Multiply that scenario by a few million, and you’ll get a sense of what’s going on in couples’ bedrooms all over the country. 

The NHS says almost half of people in the UK snore sometimes and around a quarter of us are regular snorers.

A poll conducted by the US National Sleep Foundation in 2005 found that sleep problems-most commonly snoring-not only have an impact on how well you sleep but can negatively affect relationships between bed partners. 

Banishing your bed partner to another room, however, isn’t always a sound approach. A better solution would, of course, be a cure for snoring, because snoring can be a sign of more serious health problems that require treatment.

What causes snoring?

To no one’s surprise, the largest group of run-of-the-mill snorers is middle-aged and older men. However,  snoring is more common than most people realise. 30% of adults over the age of 30 snore, and women make up one-third of those snorers. Benign snoring, as it’s called, is caused by “upper airway turbulence” that leads to vibrations of the soft palate and the uvula (that little flap that hangs down at the back of the throat), explains snoring expert Dr Joseph Scianna.

When you think about it, the fact that snoring increases with age makes sense. As we age we lose muscle tone everywhere, including in our palates, which become flabby and thus more susceptible to vibration. Allergies or being overweight can also contribute to snoring. Drinking alcohol before bedtime, which relaxes the muscles in the airway, is another potential cause. Or you may simply have been born to snore. “Some people have larger tongues or palates than others, or thick necks or a weak glossopharygeal nerve (which helps control the tongue), says sleep expert Dr Ralph Pascualy. “It’s often many factors that interact in different ways.”

When is snoring a serious sleep problem?

Snoring has been fodder for humourists for centuries, inspiring images of clueless oafs who generate noises loud enough to lift the roof or wake people in neighbouring counties. However, it’s really not that funny to be kept awake all night, and it’s even less amusing when the noise is a sign of a serious health problem, known as obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA). OSA is a disorder in which breathing repeatedly stops for brief periods during sleep because the throat muscles can’t keep the airway consistently open. This leads to fragmented sleep and lowers oxygen levels in the blood, which in turn puts people at risk for cardiovascular problems such as hypertension and heart disease, not to mention daytime fatigue.